BPMG joins XPLA as validator

Animoca Brands Remains Bullish on Blockchain GamingBlockchain-based games have gained significant attention within the cryptocurrency space, witnessing remarkable growth and daily activity across various protocols despite challenging market conditions. Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands, the Web3 and metaverse company, recently pronounced its bullishness where blockchain gaming is concerned.In 2022 alone, Web3 gaming attracted approximately $4.5 billion in funding, as asset managers, investment funds, and venture capitalists sought to capitalize on the flourishing sector. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Yat Siu, Co-Founder of Animoca Brands, expressed the company’s renewed optimism in the blockchain gaming sector and provided an update on its eagerly anticipated metaverse fund, which made headlines in late 2022.Photo by julien Tromeur on UnsplashAnimoca’s metaverse fundThe metaverse fund, originally planned to have a budget of up to $2 billion in November 2022, aimed to invest in mid to late-stage startups focused on developing metaverse products and experiences. However, due to recent volatility affecting the cryptocurrency space, Animoca Brands scaled back its investment target to $1 billion in January 2023. Reports in March suggested a further reduction to $800 million.While awaiting the required license to launch the metaverse fund, Siu emphasized that Animoca Brands has been actively investing in early-stage startups through its venture arm, with additional investments directly from the company’s balance sheet. Currently, the company boasts a portfolio of over 450 companies.AAA blockchain games anticipatedDespite the challenges, Siu anticipates the release of several “AAA” blockchain games, in which Animoca Brands has made investments, by the end of 2023 or early 2024. Siu believes that the quality of titles backed by Animoca Brands, built on open protocol systems such as Ethereum and Polygon, will contribute to the long-term sustainability of the sector. He underlined the importance of these games being on-chain, enabling third parties to leverage the capabilities of blockchain technology and explore exciting possibilities.Siu also highlighted the significant role of scaling protocols like Polygon and technological advancements such as zero-knowledge proofs in boosting the development and quality of upcoming blockchain games. Immutable, a layer-2 platform, effectively reduced costs and improved transaction speeds for NFT generation in blockchain games. Choosing the right blockchain platform, especially Ethereum, is crucial for success in the industry.While fully decentralized games present challenges, Siu acknowledged that a hybrid on-chain and off-chain approach might be more suitable as the industry progresses towards true decentralization. Certain game features, such as provenance and skins, lend themselves well to on-chain implementation, while others may require a gradual transition.Integrating blockchain tech with existing gamingSiu emphasized the potential for integrating blockchain elements into the existing gaming culture worldwide. By designing interfaces that are familiar to gamers and gradually introducing crypto and Web3 experiences, gaming companies can facilitate the adoption of blockchain technology while promoting financial literacy among players.The Head of Animoca Ventures, an Animoca Brands sister company, recently explained that key Japanese games console makers are also showing an interest in blockchain gaming.Looking ahead, the year 2023 and beyond are critical for the blockchain gaming sector. The release of high-quality games, coupled with significant investments, will shape the long-term success of the industry. With its extensive portfolio and unwavering optimism, Animoca Brands remains dead set on driving innovation and pushing the boundaries of blockchain gaming.

Alibaba Cloud Partners With Avalanche to Deploy MetaversesChina’s Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group, and one of the world’s largest cloud computing companies, has entered into a partnership with layer one blockchain project Avalanche.The cloud division of the Chinese tech giant has built a launchpad which will allow businesses to deploy metaverses, hosted on the Avalanche blockchain.Photo by C Dustin on UnsplashEnter the CloudverseAlibaba has named the launchpad “Cloudverse”. In accessing the Cloudverse, businesses will be enabled in customizing, launching and maintaining their very own metaverses, running on top of the Avalanche blockchain. In a tweeted message on Thursday, the Avalanche project team stated that “Alibaba Cloud’s millions of clients can easily deploy custom metaverses and unlock new dimensions for consumers.” It’s clear that the blockchain specialist sees the value in linking up with an entity with the market reach that Alibaba Cloud can provide. Expanding on that, it stated: “Cloudverse gives businesses an easy, white-glove, and cost-effective way to expand their brands to the Web3 virtual world.”Singapore’s MUA DAOAlongside Alibaba Cloud and Avalanche, a Singapore-based project is participating in the collaboration. Metaverse Union of Architects Decentralized Autonomous Organization makes for quite a long-winded entity, meaning that the project is more commonly known as MUA DAO. The DAO sees its mission as helping entities to overcome the technological hurdles of the crypto world by offering the largest virtual reality guild of architects, thus making available a large number of capable builders for the metaverse.Taking to Twitter on Thursday, the project outlined that the partnership marked a significant milestone for the DAO. “As the metaverse middleware, #MUADAO will support Cloudverse from creation and customization to continual operation in #MUAverse,” it outlined.MUA DAO sees the likely outcome of the collaboration as leading to a cost effective mechanism through which Asia-Pacific businesses can expand into the Web3 world, empowering clients to create custom metaverses and unlocking new customer experiences.MUA DAO terms its offering as “MUAverse, describing it as “a one-stop Metaverse Middleware Infrastructure developed and operated by MUADAO, designed to empower enterprises and businesses in the creation, operation, and management of digital assets.”Avalanche’s unique structureThe three entities coordinated the announcement of the collaboration to coincide with the Avalanche Summit II conference, which commenced on Wednesday in Barcelona, Spain and runs until Friday.As a layer one blockchain, Avalanche has a unique structure which enables subnets, sets of nodes or validators which can be built on top of blockchains. Subnets offer the advantage of allowing developers to customize them on an application-specific basis. Such a blockchain infrastructure will be beneficial in facilitating customizable blockchain solutions relative to the proposed Cloudverse.Blockchain credentialsRecently, Alibaba announced its intention to open a Web3 incubator lab in Japan. The lab will be a collaboration between Alibaba, Tokyu Land Corporation and Skeleton Crew Studio. One of its principal objectives will be to enable game developers to learn about and harness blockchain technology relative to virtual reality gaming.Additionally, Alibaba Cloud intends to launch a blockchain node service in Japan at a later stage in 2023. In a further nod to its blockchain credentials, Alibaba Cloud was also a co-organiser of Hong Kong’s recently-held Web3 Festival, alongside Amazon Web Services and Hong Kong-based Cyberport.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the independent state agency responsible for oversight and development of the Southeast Asian nation’s capital markets, is seeking public commentary on the updated set of rules it has proposed to regulate initial coin offering (ICO) portals.  In a notice published on its website on July 18, the SEC outlined that it is seeking public comments in relation to the criteria it has established for investor communication and service provision by ICO portals as part of its proposed regulations.Photo by Alin Meceanu on UnsplashEasing knowledge test requirementsThe regulations had been approved in principle last month and put an onus on ICO portals to ensure that retail investors take a knowledge test and pass that test before they are permitted to participate in trading ICO tokens. The current regulations stipulate that retail investors must undertake knowledge tests on an ongoing three-monthly basis. The updated regulations propose that ICO portals conduct suitability tests that are sufficiently comprehensive such that the investor understands the risks associated with any potential ICO-related investment. The SEC stated that the objective is that the investor has “a risk tolerance level appropriate and in alignment with the product risk.” Instead of quarterly knowledge tests, the proposed regulations require suitability assessments to be carried out once every two years. In this way, the commission believes that it will reduce the administrative burden for ICO portals while reducing friction for the investor. It stated: “These proposed requirements are in line with regulatory practices applicable to both securities and digital asset business operators.” Jagdish Pandya, founder of blockchain venture builder BlockOn Ventures, told Decrypt that “Thailand has been a first mover for crypto regulations and the SEC has played a pivotal role in providing all regulated activities and licenses, much ahead of Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam in South East Asia.”  Moving past previous ICO market failuresPandya added that the proposed suitability tests would protect “amateur investors” from piling into ICOs and losing their funds like in the “old ICO scam era.” ICOs first gained significant popularity in 2017 as the crypto market started to expand. Around $6.2 billion in funding was raised by a broad range of crypto projects in that year. However, a complete lack of regulation at the time meant that the ICO marketplace was laden with outright scams. ICOs were being hyped up in pump-and-dump schemes, with investors losing most, if not all, of their funds as the fraudulent ICO promoters rug-pulled them, abandoning the projects and taking off with the ICO funding. Thailand’s existing ICO portal regulations were introduced in November 2023. The regulations require project promoters to make disclosures with regard to project creditworthiness and risk for debt-like tokens with a predetermined fixed rate of return.  Those promoting infrastructure-backed tokens, which allow the token holder to earn a revenue share from infrastructure projects, are subject to rules regarding items such as due diligence, asset valuation and issuer asset management.